Fearful Diagnosis
by Kage Chikara
Summary: Rich billionaire Bruce Wayne ends up as a patient under Dr. House. But does he have a dark secret? Well, obviously.


Author's Notes: This is my friend's fault. She made me write Bruce/House. No knowledge of Batman continuity is needed to read this fic. No knowledge of Batman at all really. And this isn't actually slash despite the /. Continuing the trend of naming all my House fics with the word diagnosis in them.

Fearful Diagnosis

"Bruce. Wayne."

It's the third time Cuddy has said the name. House tapped his cane systematically on the desk, waiting for her to stop glaring at him. She crossed her arms. "You're taking the case." She informed him.

"That's a lovely necklace." He said, pointing his cane at a jade pendant hanging from her neck. "It draws the eye to your cleavage so subtly. I barely even noticed."

She narrowed her eyes, and took a breath to calm herself. "He's presenting with hallucinations, his BP is 180 over 90, and he has cardiac arrhythmia."

He frowned. "Let me think. Billionaire playboy…I wonder if its possible…he could be using illegal substances? No, I forget, only us poor folk do those weird drug things." He unscrewed the lid on his vicodin and dumped a handful of pills into his mouth.

"I don't think you're exactly in the poorhouse, Dr. House." Cuddy said through gritted teeth. He made a mental note to tell her that was horrible for her teeth.

"Exactly. Hence, I'm as clean as they come."

She huffed. He grinned. "You're taking the case. If its as simple as you think it is, then the worst that will happen is you'll actually make some money for this hospital."

"Can I get out of clinic duty while I'm attending this billionaire? I'm sure he'll need round-the-clock supervision."

Cuddy tried to glare daggers at him, but the vicodin was already dulling the pain of anything coming his way. "No." She snapped and he sighed, opening his bottle of vicodin, offering her one.

"For the period cramps. I'm sure they must be killer."

--

He does not know where he is. Everyone looks like monsters, leering creatures that stare at him and then began to laugh. Boys wearing shreds of costumes emblazoned with an R. A cat that sat on his chest and sliced into his throat until he screamed and the laughing creature held him down and kissed him on the lips and he fell into oblivion.

--

"All right, people. Thirty-six year old male, presenting with hallucinations, elevated BP and cardiac arrthmyia. Differential diagnosis?"

"Drugs." Chase said.

"I guess you would know all about what rich boys do at parties." House said.

"Tox screen is positive for hallucinogens. Pretty heavy levels. The rest could just be a reaction to whatever he's hallucinating about." Cameron confirmed.

Foreman, of all of them, stayed silent and House swung his cane toward the other man's head, vaguely impressed when he didn't flinch.

"Let's hear from the minority side of the room. Annoyed that he's getting drugged while your black brothers are starving in the ghettos?"

"That was low even for you, House. No, I just think…the tox screen didn't show any raised dopamine or serotonin levels. All of what we would expect to see from recreational drug use." He thought he saw a flicker of understand or interest in House's eyes. "I mean, the guy got flown here from Gotham hallucinating the whole time. That had to be some really bad acid."

House wrote 'really bad acid' on the board in big black letters, then crossed out really bad and wrote 'really good' in the space above it. Chase covered his mouth to hide a smile.

"So has anyone actually got into the room with our billionaire?" House asked, then nodded as Cameron raised her hand. "Did you notice any boyish charm? A certain smell of money? Any immediate pheromonal reactions?" He watched her glare at him and grinned.

"No. He just mumbled and drooled and whimpered a lot. Not my dating criteria."

Chase coughed loudly. "House." He coughed again when everyone looked at him.

House sighed and banged the cane down on the table, enjoying the fact that they still jumped at that. "Dr. Chase, you seem to be getting sick. You'd better take clinic duty for me today. No point in all of us getting around infectious diseases, after all."

He limped past them out the door.

"Wait, what about the differential?" Foreman said, ignoring Chase's sputtering.

"What, you don't know?" House said, glancing back in the doorway. "Did no one figure this out?"

There was a pause as they all looked at each other. "So you think it's just acid?" Cameron said, glancing at the door.

"Bzzzt. Doctor Cameron, you may accompany Dr. Chase and his illness to the clinic and receive your reward of one free minor illness. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars."

He turned away again, limping.

"Then where are you going?" Chase called after him.

"To go ask the patient."

--

Falling falling faling he's never been afraid of heights falling down deeper there's an alleyway at the end and mother and father are waiting there and please. Please no don't smile at me like that I didn't mean to giant bats and they're eating chunks of his arm.

--

House sat down next to Bruce Wayne. He was in mild restraints, thrashing and hissing like a wild thing. He kept making little mumbling sounds, his eyes rolling back in his head.

"Now." He held up the filled syringe. "If what you're experiencing is actually a bad acid trip, this is just going to make it worse. Your symptoms are closer, though, to hallucinogenic gas experiments the military tried back during 'Nam to see if making the enemy crazy helped us win the war." He paused and glanced at his captive audience to make sure Bruce was paying attention, then continued.

"The gas worked by simulating receptors in the brain, namely receptors that control fear. That seems to be more or less what happened to you, though you'll have to tell me, assuming you don't stroke out when I inject this into you, exactly what you took to get exposed to that." He paused, then nodded.

"So anyway, this." He held up the syringe. "Should correctly soothe all those little receptors like the warm hand of your dead father. Of course, if it doesn't work you'll stroke out and if it does work you'll be temporarily lacking proper fear. Then again, any man who apparently has sex with as many women as you're rumored to must already be lacking that. Not that I don't applaud you for the effort."

Behind House, Wilson cleared his throat. "You know that's pretty close to illegal," he said.

House glanced behind him and grinned. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Going to run to Cuddy?"

Wilson took a slow step back before answering that, as though afraid House would lunge if he spoke within range of that cane. "I'm going to walk slowly to Cuddy," he decided. "If he dies during that time, though…" He paused, then let the threat go and just walked away. House pushed the door of the hospital room closed with his cane, then shoved the syringe into Wayne's neck.

The man on the bed spasmed, all of the muscles in his arms standing out so much House worried he might burst a vein. His head jerked from one side to the other and his mouth moved in a silent whimper.

Then he snapped the restraints and shoved House against the wall so fast the doctor had no time to fight back, his hand closing hard on House's windpipe as his eyes burned. After a minute of staring, he blinked.

"You're not. The Scarecrow." His voice was startlingly deep and raspy, like a smoker. He blinked again slowly. "Where is he?" When House didn't answer, except for some gasping sounds, Bruce shook him again, his face close to the doctors.

"Where IS HE?" He growled.

"Get him!" Someone yelled and Cameron was there, shoving a syringe full of sedative into their patient. For a minute Bruce struggled, his eyes wide and then he collapsed slowly.

House sunk to the floor and Cameron knelt next to him. "Dr. House, are you all right?"

"No. I think I need…mouth to mouth…" he said. She stumbled back and glared at him, stalking out and leaving him laughing on the floor.

--

"So Mr. Wayne, while we don't know what caused your exposure to the hallucinatory gas, you seem to be entirely symptom free. Again, the hospital would like to thank you for your generous donation," Cuddy said.

Bruce smiled at her, only the lines around his eyes indicating that he hadn't been here for a nice weekend of massage and relaxation. "A pleasure, Dr. Cuddy. I wish, however, I'd been able to meet the man who saved my life."

Cuddy's expression twitched somewhere between flirtatious—Bruce Wayne was even more attractive in person than he was on TV—and annoyed. "Yes, well, Dr. House is currently under review for some of his…alternative medical practices."

Bruce blinked at her. "But they worked," he pointed out. "Save my life, in fact."

"Yes, well, they could have killed you just as easily."

He seemed to consider this, then nodded, squeezing her hand one more time. "A pleasure, again, Dr. Cuddy," he said, drifting out of the front door of the hospital to where an older man was waiting with a limo.

From the window of Wilson's office, House watched.

"Aren't you going to talk to him?" The oncologist asked, too busy doing papework to really look at him. "And tell him you think he wears rubber suit to fight crime at night?"

House smiled at his own reflection in the mirror. "Why bother? I know I'm right."

"People have made good money speculating about who the Batman is."

House popped in a few extra vicodin he had gotten for the rather spectacular bruising around his neck. "I didn't say I could prove it."

"Then why are you smiling?"

House shrugged. "Maybe I just like the idea of finally getting to accuse Cuddy of bestiality." Then he walked out, cane over his shoulder, humming a jazzy tune.


End file.
